The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus - Softcover

Christoffel Von Grimmelshausen, Hans Jakob

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0241309867 ISBN 13: 9780241309865

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2018

Synopsis

The first great German novel - an extraordinary recreation of the horrors of the Thirty Years War, written by a veteran of the conflict

First published in 1668, Simplicissimus tells the picaresque, brilliantly described adventures of a boy swept up in the Thirty Years War and the terrible things that he experiences. Some of it is realistic, some fantastical but the overall effect is an unmatched picture of Europe torn apart by an endless, sadistic, futile war from which nobody can escape. The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus was rediscovered in twentieth-century Germany where the book's grim message as a story of war in all of its horror and absurdity resonated and the book is now established as one of the essential works of German literature.

About this title

About the Author

Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen (1621-1676) was born in the Wetterau town of Gelnhausen, an area devastated by the Thirty Years' War. Late in life, Grimmelshausen wrote Simplicius Simplicissimus, which became an immediate and overwhelming success, initiating the German novel tradition. It was widely imitated and existed in many versions and languages. Very little is known of Grimmelhausen's life and it is hard to know how much of his novel is based on his own experiences and how much on tales he had heard of the war.
J.A. Underwood is a distinguished translator of German. For Penguin Classics he has also translated Walter Benjamin's One-Way Street and Other Writings and Sigmund Freud's Interpreting Dreams.
Kevin Cramer is the author of The Thirty Years' War and German Memory in the Nineteenth Century. He is associate professor of history at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis.

Review

Simplicissimus not only satirizes the world's folly but offers a Christian view of the vanity of this transitory existence. For this purpose, Grimmelshausen sense Simplicius off on a series of picaresque adventures. ... And he has done so in a lively, colloquial, folksy style that is a major and original achievement, and a test for the translator. J. A. Underwood certainly passes this test. He has gone all out for a vivid, slangy, contemporary style, and his version is tremendous fun to read, as well as accurate. -- Ritchie Robertson * TLS *

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0241309867
• ISBN 13: 9780241309865
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 496
• Editor: Cramer Kevin